Fred Hamelrath, in his My Turn column printed on the 28th, showed himself to be either seriously spun, the victim of false information and malicious liars, or he is proposing to destroy the Constitutional protections that we have lived under since the beginning of the United States. He declares his aim to be a Constitutional Amendment to change the First Amendment.

He accepts the most outrageous ideas uncritically. Consider the casual way he repeats urban legends that President Obama is a Muslim. According to Christianity Today magazine, that simply is not true. If a magazine devoted to evangelicals doesn't convince you, let's look at some facts:

Obama drinks alcohol, forbidden to Muslims; he eats pork products, forbidden to Muslims; he does not keep Ramadan, required of Muslims ... the list is endless. I also remind you of the president who proclaimed Islam to be a "religion of peace." Barack Obama? No, it was George W. Bush who also opened the 2000 Republican National Convention with an Islamic prayer. In fact, Suhail Khan titled a piece on Bush as "America's First Muslim President." So, Hamelrath is both inconsistent and wrong.

The meat of Hamelrath's argument though is, "... I do not assume our Founders of the Constitution intended to draw up a document to protect a religion that could or would pursue a doctrine that would lead to the destruction of the nation they were trying to build." This argument was used against Catholics in the 1830s, Jews in the 1890s, and now Muslims. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

The Founders believed deeply in religious freedom. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason champions atheism. The Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams and unanimously accepted by the Senate, says, "... the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen ..." Perhaps Mr. Hamelrath is channeling the Founders, but I can only draw conclusions from their writings. They founded this country on a basis of absolute religious freedom.

Thomas Jefferson, as usual, may have said it best: "Where the preamble (to the Virginia Bill of Religious Freedom) declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."

Mr. Hamelrath may believe that our current crop of politicians can create a better, more lasting system of government than did Jefferson, Franklin and the other great statesmen who designed our system of government, but as for me I support the Constitution of the United States as it now stands and the First Amendment which allows Hamelrath to try to destroy it, whether through ignorance or actual malice.

JEFFREY E. BOURGET

Coeur d'Alene